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Most people who go to the gym want a big bench press. There are so many different training techniques out there it's hard to decide which one to listen to. But pushing your body to the limit involves proper training and diet, the right mindset, and good technique. Read on for tips and tricks on how to increase your bench press.

Steps

Method1

Mastering the Technique

1

Use proper technique. Your technique may be keeping you from realizing a stronger bench press. Not employing the right technique, in fact, can drive pounds and pounds from your regular press and keep you from finding your true max.

2

Master the grip. Grab the bar a little wider than shoulder-width apart, holding it close to your wrists, not your fingers. A wide grip messes with the balance of the weight, while a closed grip activates your triceps more than your chest. (Triceps are good, but we'll work on them later.)

Squeeze the bar tightly. Pretend that you're trying to break it as you begin; this will prime your triceps and get you in a fighting mood.

3

Push up in a straight line. Try to get a straight, even line going as you push the bar up and lower it back down. When the bar gets to its lowest point, don't stop: lower it down and push it up in one single movement.[1] Push your shoulder-blades together as you bench in order to get your upper back tight.

Keep your feet driven into the ground. They're there to support you.

Keep your elbows tucked near your sides. Don't let them flop out as you lift.

Don't lift your chest or arch your back to push the bar up. Your arms, not your back, should be doing the work. You may start in a slightly arched position, but don't arch your back in order to get that last rep.

4

Lift fast. While you want to be deliberate, it won't pay to lift 12 reps in two minutes. Make the lifting process one continuous movement — without bouncing off your chest — and at most take a break of one minute in between sets.

5

Pay attention to bench press don'ts. While the bench press technique isn't rocket science, there are things that you can do on the bench that can cause injury or keep you from maximizing your training. Pay attention to them:

Don't let the bar bounce off your chest. It's more work to hover the bar right over the chest, instead of bouncing it off the chest. This work will translate into more power.

When lifting, keep your wrists pointed up towards the sky, not out to the back of your head. Keeping your wrists out, as opposed to up, will increase the load your wrist joints carry.

Method2

Developing Your Muscles

1

Max out at least once a week. Maybe you train your chest two or three times a week. You'd be surprised how many people never bother to max out once during the week. Maxing out is a single bench press at your highest possible load.

Max out after you've performed your normal sets, at the end of your bench press routine.

Always grab a spotter to help you navigate the max out. You never want to max out alone.

If you can perform one bench press rep of a certain weight, it's not your max. Ramp up slowly to find the weight at which you struggle to do one rep.

2

Lift weights that you struggle with. This advice is along the same lines as the previous tip. When the human body gradually lifts heavier poundage, it adjusts by building muscle to accommodate that heavier load. If you never test it with a heavier load, it never forces itself to accommodate; you stay at your max, for all intents and purposes, forever. Improving your bench press weight is often as easy as periodically working in unworkable weight.

Say you do four sets of bench, starting out with 180 lbs., and ramping up to 185, 190, and finally 200. You can perform all sets — not easily but fitfully. Then it's time to adjust your weight. Start off at 185 lbs., ramping up to 190, 195, and then 210. Really push the last set. You should be struggling to complete it.

If you want to complete all four sets, choose increasing weights that are all just barely manageable. Then try four reps of a fifth set, where you struggle with the last rep.

Alternately, you can try sets with 4 to 5 reps. If you're only doing 5 reps per set, increase your weight significantly. Try these types of sets maybe once a week if you work out your chest twice a week.

3

Make sure both arms can lift equal weight. If you're like most normal weight lifters, your dominant hand is a little stronger than your non-dominant hand. Unfortunately, you can only bench as much as your non-dominant hand will let you. To bench more weight, saddle your weaker side with more of a workout so that it grows as strong as your dominant side.

4

Treat your triceps well. Your triceps and chest are what drive your bench press power.[2][3] Failure to train your triceps will result in a stranded bench press. Devote one full day a week to punishing your triceps (in a good way) so that they gain mass and strength. Follow your chest workout with triceps exercises.

Some good triceps exercises include:

Dips

Skull crushers

One-arm cable extensions

Closed-grip bench press

Triceps extension

Pushups

5

Get help doing negatives. A negative bench press is when you use very heavy weights — sometimes 1.5x heavier than your one-rep max — and slowly lowering the weight down to your chest. One or two friends then lift the weight back up to its starting position and you lower the weight again. This simple, but hardy, exercise is a key way to ramp up your resistance training and get a better bench.[4]

Method3

Improving Diet and Lifestyle

1

Eat like you mean it. Crush food like Kobayashi. If you're not consuming enough calories per day, don't expect to see meaningful gains in your bench press. You want to add muscle, not maintain it, and in order to do this, you want to eat up to seven times a day, with each meal containing at least some protein and complex carbohydrates.

2

Consider taking supplements, such as whey protein or casein. If you do choose to take protein supplements as a way to increase your muscle mass, take the supplements, usually in the form of a shake, at morning, after your workout, and then before bed for best results.[5]

Understand that protein shakes contain large amounts of calories in addition to protein. If you are prone to weight gain or acne, taking large amounts of supplements may have unintended consequences.

3

Get your beauty sleep. Your muscles repair and rebuild while you're resting and sleeping, so depriving them of proper sleep can be harmful for their development.[6] Get rest in between workouts, and schedule enough time so that you consistently get eight hours of sleep every night.

4

Take a hiatus if you've reached a plateau. Sometimes, your fatigued muscles refuse to grow simply because they've been worked so hard for so long. Taking a one-week break, or doing a week of reduced weightlifting, may be just what you need in order to put you over the hump again.

5

Make sure you're not overtraining.[7] Unless you have a vicious vendetta that you're powering your workouts with (revenge is sweet, after all), there's little reason why you need to be benching more than twice a week. In fact, benching more than twice a week can mean that you have less energy to spend on your triceps, which keeps many weight lifters from reaching their potential. So make sure that instead of high-quantity bench press, you're getting high-quality bench press, using the right technique, and working those triceps.

To increase your bench press, gradually increase how much weight you're benching so that you're always struggling to complete your sets, which will help your muscles grow and adapt to heavier weights. Just make sure you're still able to brench with proper form. You can also increase your bench press by spending 1 day a week working out your triceps, which will make it easier to lift heavier weights. To learn how to perfect your bench press so you're getting the most out of your workouts, read on!

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wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 16 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. Together, they cited 7 references.